Healing the Nation: Literature, Progress, and Christian Science by L. Ashley Squires (Review)

Stiles, Anne. “L. Ashley Squires, Healing the Nation: Literature, Progress, and Christian Science,” ALH Online Review, Series XV 1. Oxford University Press, 2017. (Review)

Stiles’ review of L. Ashley Squires’ Healing the Nation calls attention to the gap her book fills in the field of American literature. The historical context Squires provides for Christian Science helps explain why specific authors were drawn to—or repelled by—the faith. Although it became a cultural phenomenon that left “virtually no corner of the twentieth-century American literary canon untouched,” literary scholars have largely avoided Christian Science. Whether this neglect stems from the religion’s dwindling membership or from longstanding stigma, Squires makes a compelling case for why a new study of literature and Christian Science is needed. For much of its history, Christian Science has been understood within a broader cultural competition between the physical sciences and a form of evidence-based religious healing. Squires seeks to clarify texts that have remained difficult to access due to a lack of contextual understanding. Stiles notes that Squires is “so far the only critic to interpret A Little Princess through the lens of Christian Science.” Yet Squires’ monograph is not exclusively literary; it also provides important historical context while engaging journalism and biography.

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See also annotation: Healing the Nation: Literature, Progress, and Christian Science by L. Ashley Squires